Part 2
Described as a musical tale for children,' Peter and the Wolf was first performed at a children's concert in Moscow in 1936. Since then it has gained wide popularity, and has been produced as a ballet, both in England and America. The story of Peter's resourcefulness and the wolfs discomfiture is told by the narrator and illustrated by the orchestra. Each character in the story is represented by an instrument; the bird by a flute, the duck by an oboe, the cat by a clarinet in a low register, the grandfather by a bassoon, and the wolf by three horns. Peter's blithely adventurous theme, which begins the ' musical tale,' is played by the strings.
Harold Rutland